So, I’m determined to finish a great draft of this novel I’m setting in Bratislava by the end of the year. Originally I’d thought of making it my NaNoWriMo novel in November, but there’s two reasons I’ve decided against that: firstly, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law will be visiting from Switzerland for the first part of November, and secondly, because I suspect that doing NaNoWriMo again might focus my writing too much on just getting words on the screen rather than writing it well.

That decided, I knew I needed to find another way to get myself on track and motivated. I already know I work better with deadlines, and especially so if somebody else is keeping an eye on these deadlines. That’s where the wonderful Katrina comes in.

Katrina’s been a friend of mine since I was about 12 years old and recently, for the first time in a long time, we started living in the same city again. She’s gone to study Arts at uni this year and like me, sometimes has trouble getting what she wants done on time, so we came up with a plan to help each other help ourselves.

Basically, Katrina now has a list of the basic chapter outlines for the rest of my novel (remember, I wrote the first chapter already) and that includes a list of dates by which I’ll be sending her a good draft of each chapter. And these dates have also been programmed into my funky Remember the Milk reminder page. Setting up this outline and the deadlines associated with it has already got me inspired, as well as made me see the whole project in a very manageable way. Basically, I’ll need to write a chapter per week, approximately, with allowances made for planned holidays and so on.

In exchange, Katrina’s sending me a list of deadlines she has for all her university assessments this semester, and it’s my job to check that she sends me drafts of essays and reports when she’s promised herself she will. She’s studying some fascinating stuff like European Studies, Philosophy and Classics so I’m looking forward to reading what she writes. But more than that I’m looking forward to her checking up that I write what I say I’ll write, too.